I’ve seen a bumper sticker that says, “What would Atticus do?”—a tribute to Atticus Finch, the saintly lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird. Having finished watching (via Netflix) six seasons of the BBC TV series Foyle’s War, I’m ready to slap on a “What would Christopher Foyle do?” sticker.

Sarah's Key is culled from a popular novel (by Tatiana de Rosnay) set during the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation of France. The main character, an Amer­i­can magazine writer (Kristin Scott Thomas) living in Paris, discovers that her husband's family acquired their home after the Jews who once lived there were sent to an abandoned stadium, where they endured three hellish days before the Nazis transported them to the camps.